Japan

Japan Top 20:

1.      The train system. It’s so high tech, so efficient, and so easy to navigate that I got from Kobe to Kyoto all by myself…with the help of a Peruvian guy…and a Chinese lady. Whatever, I liked the trains.

2.      The vending machines. OH MY GOD the vending machines. I got hot coffee—no, more specifically, a MOCHA LATTE—in a cup, with a lid, straight out of a rest-stop vending machine. I also got soda that was already poured into a glass for me. Others enjoyed hot French fries, ramen noodles, and used women’s panties (I wasn’t allowed in the section that vending machine was). I love Japan.

3.      The claw machines. Seriously, I blew through more money than I should have on those things. But they are EVERYWHERE, and they have every toy a kid (or immature adult) ever dreamed of! And the employees were so super nice to me (and/or sympathetic at how delightfully bad I was) that they showed me EXACTLY how to get what I wanted, promising that if I failed this time, they’d shake the machine for me. Mommy, look! I gotted a giant llama!

4.      Cabbage pancakes, octopus balls, and something that’s still moving on the plate. Frankly, when that’s what the only English-speaking guy at the food court is selling, you have to suck it up and eat it.

5.      Bright green melon-flavored soda. Tastes and looks like you’re drinking radioactive lemonade!

6.      Amina onsen, a hotspring and bathhouse right outside of Kobe and atop Mt. Rokko. Went there by my lonesome, ran into a Psychology professor and her partner, and proceeded to see much more of them than I was anticipating (no swimsuits allowed). I think I had to be one of maybe 4 people in the whole place under 40. Minus the wrinkles in odd places, it was exactly how I’d imagined it to be. Ask me about the procedure of actually getting INTO the water later. It’s complicated and kind of hilarious.

7.      Nara – Japan’s 9th century capital, home to extensive Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples, and the land of hungry, free-roaming deer.

8.      Getting attacked and promptly munched on by the hungry, free-roaming deer.

9.      Porn shops in Tokyo, and accidentally ending up in the “14-years-old and under” section while looking for my missing friends. I’m also a fan of the excessive, ridiculous sex toy called “Magnum”. I’ll let you imagine what that means. Also there are bedazzled dildos, which I don’t think would be very effective during sex, but what do I know?

10.     7/11. Tokyo has ‘em, and I used ‘em. Great Japanese food and booze for under $10!

11.     Walking into an non-Westernized Japanese restaurant with no English on the menu, knowing the Japanese word for egg while the Japanese waitress knows the English word “beef”, and proceeding to literally be served rice with beef and a fried egg on top for my lunch.

12.     Pictures/scale models of food the restaurants often put outside their doors to make sure the annoying tourists know what they’re getting themselves into before walking inside.

13.     Getting a free stay in a luxury, 5-star hotel, courtesy of my drunken friend, his parents, and his pissed off sister.

14.     Hakone: the most beautiful place on earth.

15.     Speaking my broken Japanese, and watching how unbelievably excited the Japanese people get when I do it!

16.     Little girls in kimonos.

17.     Wedding crashing at the Meiji Shrine. Twice.

18.     Purifying myself with spring water at all the Shinto shrines.

19.     Wearing a cardboard Pikachu hat and wandering throughout the streets of Kyoto like a 5-year-old tourist.

20.     Wearing an Ash Ketchum hat and superhero goggles in downtown Tokyo in order to look ridiculous, and only succeeding in looking half as ridiculous as half the Japanese teen girls.